Wil-Blog-O-Sphere

Yesterday night I got down to the Mississippi river gorge in Minneapolis on an evening geocahing mission.? It was like winter in June with 70 degrees!? The big river cottonwoods were loosing their cotton and it was collecting in the quiet of the gorge.? I don't think I?have ever seen it this thick before, usually it blows away.?

Here's the garden update for today.? Dry Dry Dry.? Seems that the eggplant were just too small to take the transplant.? Since we have not gotten any rainfall since we planted, the garden needs daily watering.? Hopefully the Spring rains come soon.?

This is batch 2 in the Summer of the Single American 1056 Yeast Packet.?

I bought all the ingredients for a brown ale with the intention of using the sap from my tapped maple as a replacement for the water in the beer.? Instead of doing an all-grain bactch, I used an extract recipe and bought another set of ingredients.? This left me with a brown ale to make.? The only catch is that this recipe is for an ENGLISH brown ale rather than an AMERICAN brown ale.? So this beer suffers from a split personality - a mix of english hops and malt and a crisp american ale yeast profile.?